Golda (2023)

Rated PG-13.  In terms of content, this movie almost follows the formula of Darkest Hour.  It is a war drama about being in the bunker.  As such, despite the insane amount of wartime atrocities going on in the film, it's mostly discussed as opposed to seen.  There is some language, as far as I remember.  It's something that kids shouldn't watch because it paints the world as a bleak and miserable place, but actual content seems to be pretty light.  My biggest frustration is the slight glorification of violence.  I'll explain later.  PG-13.

DIRECTOR: Guy Nattiv

One thing that I always thought was that reading the Bible was supposed to bring you closer to God.  Every Lent, I read the Bible.  I've been remiss in reading the whole thing, mainly because I'm Catholic and there isn't as much pressure to read the Bible shy of the important parts.  But when you make your way through the Old Testament, it really gets pretty brutal.  Much of the Old Testament is about how the Jews are persecuted and the wars that ensue because of said persecution.  Golda is a really poorly timed movie considering the events between Isreal and Palestine right now. I bring up the Bible because I want to make something incredibly clear.  When looking at Golda, sandwiched between biblical events and current events, coupled with a litany of other events, Israel is a country and a people that have been defined by war.

I don't know if you agree with me.  You probably don't, especially after what I'm about to write.  It is incredibly hard to talk about Israel.  That, in itself, is an incredibly political comment. Most politics are hard to talk about.  You are going to burn a bridge here-or-there.  For me, Israel is difficult to talk about mainly because I am not Jewish.  It's weird.  I often talk about race and politics in film because art should fundamentally be political.  But with Israel, there are generations upon generations of stories of oppression and violence, coupled with decisions that leave people to die.  Golda is a movie that tells the story of Golda Meir, the first female prime minister of Israel.  It's not a biopic of her whole life, instead focusing on the events of the Yom Kippur War between Israel and Egypt.  Without mincing words, the parallel between the Yom Kippur War and the current state of Israel are too close to be ignored.  Both events start with an attack from an aggressor that is fundamentally evil.  With Egypt, there was an attack on Israel that was meant to be a sneak attack on a high holiday.  With Palestine, it was a bombing that killed innocents.  But the story that we keep hearing about is the response to such violence.

There's a scene.  It's the climax of the movie.  I mean, I'm not really spoiling things when things really happen.  This is history.  The scene I'm talking about is one of the phone calls with Kissinger.   Most of the movie is Meir and the Israelis on the defensive.  Hit after hit keeps hitting.  The information network is less than reliable.  It's the story of the Jews being pushed around and people dying because of it.  But in the climax of the film, Golda Meir and her team have surrounded the Egyptians in their own land.  I think it is some 3,000 soldiers completely surrounded.  Meir has them right where she wants them and has the end in sight.  Kissinger calls, initially congratulating her, but also a request.  He's asking for a line of humanitarian aid to go to the Egyptians. For those who aren't in the know, it's not like Kissinger is a saint.  He's playing his game with the Russians, who are backing the Egyptians.  But to this, Meir outright refuses.  She's incensed at the very notion.  For those who don't know, humanitarian aid is basic.  Food and water to those who have surrendered.  It's part of war. 

But Golda goes into this speech about how she will slaughter each and every one of those soldiers until their general acknowledges that Israel is a sovreign state.  The intent behind that scene is two-fold.  The first is to show that, despite being an elderly and frail woman, she's not someone to be messed with and bossed around.  The second is that Israel desperately needed to have the same rights and respect as any other country, especially when it came to being acknowledged as a governmental body, not a Zionist faction.  She says words to that effect. Here's the problem, especially using the two foundational sources I have in mind.  Yes, she absolutely has a point about the role that Israel plays on the world stage.  But people aren't messages.  What she's doing is either bordering or is straight up a war crime.  She has soliders who have laid down their arms.  They are no longer a threat.  She's holding a gun to people's heads and demanding that they say words.  All of this makes a weird amount of sense when you look at the treatment of the Jews throughout history.  

But how can anyone have an objective perspective on that?  It is something that we keep running into and the movie almost glorifies that decision.  I know.  It's messy.  It's incredibly messy.  But it's also why we shouldn't make movies about every moment in history. Not everyone should necessarily have a biopic.  It's very easy to treat Golda Meir as this person who absolutely made the right decisions.  After all, the goal of the movie is to empathize with her.  She was going through all of this stuff and we're supposed to agree with the choices we made.  It's why we have that typical biopic ending where a bunch of text on the screen explains the legacy of Golda Meir.  

In terms of a movie, it doesn't even do a great job with what it is presenting.  Part of the movie is meant to make us bond with Golda.  I don't.  I honestly have a really hard time with Meir as a lynchpin for the movie. I  don't think it has anything to do with Helen Mirren's performance.  Gosh darn it, I think she does a lot with what she has.  But the movie is really jibber-jabber about military strategies. I know.  There are people who love that kind of stuff.  My old kinda-boss from Thomas Video loved Tora! Tora! Tora!, and that movie is just Military Strategy: The Movie.  Often, Golda Meir is in isolation.  We don't have a lot of relationships in the movie, shy of occasionally confiding with her assistant.  There are moments where she hallucinates and we see her inner turmoil. But the human story --the relatable story --is often behind the walls of the war.  Honestly, I don't know how the movie doesn't achieve much emotional resonance with me considering that almost any scene that wasn't a war room scene was a cancer treatment scene.  Those scenes should have gutted me.  It didn't do much.  

And let's be honest.  This movie was boring.  I'm sorry.  I have to confess that I rewatched the first thirty minutes because my mind was distracted and I wanted this movie to be good.  It just isn't.  Sometimes I can handle boring.  It's that Tora! Tora! Tora! thing.  If you find discussions about military strategy interesting, maybe Golda has some weight to it.  To me?  This was just conceptual stuff happening off screen and an occasional reaction to success and failure.  It had all the bits to make quite the emotional movie and very little of it connected.

It just isn't very good?  I'm sorry to say, but that's my thoughts.  Talking about war, especially when things are a little grey, isn't a great time.